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2026 Summer Appeal

This spring I am reminded that Adirondack Park’s institutions are both fragile and resilient thanks to connecting strands, a strong web within the Park’s larger community life. For instance, small North Country colleges face great economic tremors due to declining enrollments. Yet, they have long formed a web of environmental partners in education, research, and monitoring, spanning our majestic mountain summits to our beautiful lakes.

I think of the work at the Whiteface Mountain field station run for decades by SUNY Albany’s Atmospheric Science Research Center, without which the chemistry of Adirondack clouds and sources of atmospheric pollutants would remain human guesswork rather than scientific fact. Similarly, the 2026 Survey of Climate Change and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems involving Cornell University, Rensselaer Polytechnic, RPI, and others will be the first comprehensive scientific survey of the health of our lakes since the acid rain lake research of 1987. I think of the nonprofit and college-driven (Paul Smith’s and SUNY ESF’s) Visitor Interpretive Centers for the Adirondacks which, while underfunded, thrive in their mission to enhance visitor and resident knowledge of this great place, unique in North America.

Adirondack Wild joins our colleagues to advocate for modest state investments in these long range programs, so needed at a time when the federal administration in Washington, D.C. has seriously weakened the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Interior Department, the U.S. Forest Service, and eliminated all climate-related federal funding.

Adirondack Wild is part of this resilient community of life, but we, too, are fragile. Reaching our small annual budget is never assured. We commit to being effective with the dollars we earn. We reach out to you just twice each year to ask for your renewed investment in our advocacy. We are part of the web of interconnectedness that makes the Adirondack Park and the public’s Forest Preserve in both the Adirondack and Catskill Parks unique on the planet, and resilient in these difficult times.

Trees and marshlands reflecting in the calm waters surrounding it
Tamarac trees on a floating bog. Photo by Ken Rimany

Please consider a gift that will help us reach our annual budget goal of $155,000 by June 30. To do so, we must raise $25,000 between now and June 30.  Each dollar you can contribute is invested in our:

  • Monthly advocacy before the Adirondack Park Agency to raise APA’s standards of environmental review of large subdivisions and all badly designed development proposed in sensitive locations;
  • Intervention in the first public hearing APA has called in over 15 years to examine evidence of the impacts of new land use and development. Adirondack Wild is an intervenor in this hearing concerning the test firing of a howitzer cannon in a rural part of Lewis, near Elizabethtown, very near the public Forest Preserve and over 40 private residences.
  • Monthly comments to the Department of Environmental Conservation about visitor use management of the High Peaks Wilderness area, and in our defense of the legal guidelines for stewardship of Wilderness areas throughout the Adirondacks. New and emerging motorized technologies place pressure on NYS DEC to weaken our 50-year-old prohibitions on motorized uses in Wilderness. These pressures are ceaseless; so, ours must be, also. We regularly remind DEC that its job as steward of the Forest Preserve is to stand up to these pressures, as Wilderness is rare, fragile, and threatened here and around the country.
  • Written opinions and editorials published monthly in Adirondack Almanack (www.adirondackalmanack.com)  and New York Almanack (www.newyorkalmanack.com), as well as our advocacy in the Adirondack Explorer.
  • Defending the rights of environmental free speech and opinion, we continue our  fight against a $1 million strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP suit) brought by a marina developer upset by Adirondack Wild’s full-page opinion about their big marina expansion on 80-acre Lower Fish Creek pond. The developer claims business defamation, when in fact his goal is to silence our voices and others who might question his project. We are waging a precedent-setting case against SLAPP suits. Thankfully, we have steadfast attorneys representing us in court, and wonderful supporters backing us up.

In advance, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all you do for the wild Adirondacks, for your financial and moral support of our work during these challenging times, and for helping us meet our annual budget by raising $25,000 or more by June 30.

Thank you for your consideration. Please join us in greeting each magic spring morning and being glad for what it brings into our lives.

In forever wild friendship,
David H. Gibson, Managing Partner
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve